August 30, 2013

AMERICA’S ROLE IN SYRIA AFTER THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK AND IMMIGRATION REFORM

After hearing about the
horrific killing of civilians in Syria in a chemical weapon attack, President
Obama stated: “We have concluded that
the Syrian government in fact carried these out. And if that’s so, then there
need to be international consequences.” The United States may resort to this
military action alone, even though Britain has backed out, although France too
believes that there must be a serious deterrent to discourage the use of
chemical weapons again. The potential use of force against another country
brings up the specter of Iraq, when we went to went to war on false information
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This time it is different.
There is conclusive
proof of a chemical weapons attack, and it is sad to see images of rows of
bodies of innocent children, which was most likely perpetrated by the Assad
regime in Syria.

Still, people are legitimately
questioning America’s role and whether it is legal for America to use force
without a Security Council resolution. It is a foregone conclusion that Russia,
which is a steadfast ally of the Assad regime, will veto any proposal in the
Security Council to militarily intervene through a UN force to protect the
Syrian people from future chemical weapon attacks. The United States, along
with France, is attempting to assert and develop a new legal doctrine to bypass
the Security Council, which is that a country can use force to protect the citizens
of another country that have been killed, such as in the Syrian chemical weapon
attack. They use the recent example of NATO’s
use of force during the Kosovo crisis in 1999 and bypassing the Security
Council in the face of a Russia veto, that prevented Milosevic from further slaughtering
the Albanians, and which resulted in his downfall. Today, Serbia is a member of
the European Union and Kosovo is an independent country. Kosovo is a successful
example of countries intervening through force to stop a humanitarian disaster.
On the other hand, the world stood by when there was genocide of unimaginable
proportions in Rwanda.

No matter what people
think, but America
still remains the superpower and is expected to lead the rest of the world during
such a crises. America will never win universal admiration as a superpower
and it will make terrible mistakes, like the Iraq invasion, whose specter still
haunts us and inhibits countries today from intervening in the affairs of
another sovereign state even in the face of an actual chemical weapon attack
that has resulted in the slaughter of thousands of innocents (including 400
children) like insects killed by pesticide.

If America, as a
superpower, continues to play the role of a cop in world affairs by virtue of its superpower status, it will have
more moral legitimacy to do so if it embraces people from the world through a
humane and compassionate immigration system.
It is a system that allows immigrants to quickly integrate and become
part of America regardless of their nationality, religion or ethnicity. Even
though our immigration system is presently broken and does not permit all deserving people to become legal, American has not en mass deported its 10 million undocumented immigrants. The world would much rather prefer America as
a superpower that embraces immigration than a rising superpower such as China,
which may not in the same way as America. In the same vein, if America is
trying to develop a new international legal norm, which is the right to protect
people and bypass the moribund Security Council, even if one does not agree
whether use of force is the only way to protect, America will have more
legitimacy to do that if it is still looked upon as the beacon for hope through
its immigration system.

At the dawn of the
American Republic, Thomas Paine in Common Sense rightly and most proudly
proclaimed that “the cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all
mankind.” In this fateful hour of decision, with history and our conscience the
only sure guide, surely the reverse must be true. From the time that Thomas Jefferson in the
Declaration of Independence attacked King George III for interfering with
immigration, since the first Congress enacted the Naturalization Act of 1790,
our immigration system has been a symbol of what kind of a people we are and
what manner of nation we seek to become.
The many ideological grounds of exclusion in the 1952 Immigration Act
eloquently reflected the anxieties and prejudices of the Cold War. The abolition of the national origins quota
in 1965, passed the same year as the Voting Rights Act, testified to the
nation’s belief in the promise of equality for all. The Refugee Act of 1980 was
the embodiment of our continued commitment to the preservation and promise of
America as a refuge for the persecuted and the oppressed. The Immigration Act
of 1990 by tripling the number of employment-based visas and creating the
national interest waiver reflected a growing national realization that
participation in a global economy required an enhanced readiness to accept and
admit the best and the brightest from all nations regardless of nationality. An American that readily embraces immigrants from around the world will be more likely to better understand the world.

Therefore, while the
Obama Administration and Congress are involved with Syria, they must not lose
focus on Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The Senate Bill, S. 744, which has
already passed the Senate, will expand pathways for people to come to the US,
and will also legalize more than 10 million people. If the House passes a
similar version of S. 744, a reformed immigration system will continue to
burnish America’s role in the world.
Perhaps, no other country would have legalized 10 million of its
undocumented population ever, regardless of where they have come from, and put
them on the path towards becoming Americans. The significance and impact of
such an immigration measure would give America more moral legitimacy to speak
on behalf of the world and to seek to establish new international legal norms
that would protect vulnerable populations from future humanitarian disasters
such as the chemical weapons attack we witnessed in Syria. Now, it is our turn
to decide if our policy abroad and our actions at home will honor Dr. King’s
teaching that “the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.”

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About Cyrus Mehta

Cyrus Mehta is the founder and managing attorney of Cyrus D. Mehta & Associates, PLLC, a New York law firm which concentrates in the area of US immigration law. The firm has talented immigration attorneys who blog here on contemporary immigration topics. Visit www.cyrusmehta.com for more information.